Mr. Speaker, I will say only that when the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development became Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, I gave her the reports from the committee. I made her an offer and said, “Let us work together on a new Citizenship Act”.
There is only one problem and I think the member is going to take a while to realize it. I am hoping that when the hearings are over members will realize that we are dealing not with a few hundred cases, 450 cases, but with tens of thousands of cases. We cannot have any minister or politician stamping tens of thousands of the special permits to let the people in the 5(4) cases come in.
I threw out the challenge. I said that the Citizenship Act is 60 years old and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is 25 years old, and all I am asking from the Conservative government is that it do what all its critics said when they were in opposition. I am going to hold them to it, because I took them at their word. I fought for it with my government. I am going to fight the Conservative government just as hard as I fought my government to make sure that it will happen.
Had the election not occurred when it did and had we had a few more months, then some parts of the Citizenship Act would have been fixed, although not all of it. Had we had another year, I really believe that the recommendations of the committee would have been implemented and we would have a new Citizenship Act.